"The Aspern Papers" *****
by Henry James
One of my favorite novels is "The Portrait of a Lady" by Henry James. In fact, I've never really read anything by James I didn't like. "The Aspern Papers" is no exception--except I didn't read it, I heard it.
My first audio book!
"The Aspern Papers" is a mordantly funny story (there's James looking like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family, upper left) of a publisher who hatches what he thinks is a terribly clever plan to determine if the ancient lover of a minor fictional poet, Jeffrey Aspern, has any of the poet's yet-unseen papers he can inveigle out of her.
The publisher worms his way into Miss Bordereau's house, which happens to be in Venice, on the pretext of loving her garden--which he then has to take on the expense of renovating in order to maintain his fiction. He sends Miss B. and her odd niece, Miss Tita, flowers, thinking they will be so grateful they'll befriend him and fork over the papers.
But Miss B., though she must be 90, knows what she is about. She charges him exorbitant rent. She dangles Aspern artifacts in front of him. She nearly drives him to madness and crime.
In the end, the Aspern papers are within the hapless narrator's grasp, but at such a price he simply cannot pay it.
What makes the wicked humor in this book pop is the fact that the reader of my audiobook deftly navigates those Jamesian sentences with their piled on clauses and asides for me, making them that much more enjoyable.
The story was adapted as a movie. Click on James' photo to read more about it.
UPDATE, February 9, 2015: In a similar vein to "The Aspern Papers" is James's "The Beldonald Holbein." In this novel, a painter is enlisted to paint a great beauty, but it's her much plainer and more interesting relation--a Holbein type--who comes in for more attention. The great beauty is not amused!
One of my favorite novels is "The Portrait of a Lady" by Henry James. In fact, I've never really read anything by James I didn't like. "The Aspern Papers" is no exception--except I didn't read it, I heard it.
My first audio book!
"The Aspern Papers" is a mordantly funny story (there's James looking like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family, upper left) of a publisher who hatches what he thinks is a terribly clever plan to determine if the ancient lover of a minor fictional poet, Jeffrey Aspern, has any of the poet's yet-unseen papers he can inveigle out of her.
The publisher worms his way into Miss Bordereau's house, which happens to be in Venice, on the pretext of loving her garden--which he then has to take on the expense of renovating in order to maintain his fiction. He sends Miss B. and her odd niece, Miss Tita, flowers, thinking they will be so grateful they'll befriend him and fork over the papers.
But Miss B., though she must be 90, knows what she is about. She charges him exorbitant rent. She dangles Aspern artifacts in front of him. She nearly drives him to madness and crime.
In the end, the Aspern papers are within the hapless narrator's grasp, but at such a price he simply cannot pay it.
What makes the wicked humor in this book pop is the fact that the reader of my audiobook deftly navigates those Jamesian sentences with their piled on clauses and asides for me, making them that much more enjoyable.
The story was adapted as a movie. Click on James' photo to read more about it.
UPDATE, February 9, 2015: In a similar vein to "The Aspern Papers" is James's "The Beldonald Holbein." In this novel, a painter is enlisted to paint a great beauty, but it's her much plainer and more interesting relation--a Holbein type--who comes in for more attention. The great beauty is not amused!
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